That's right -- I'm going to take this quote from a post that Colby Cosh wrote, which is the Best Quote Ever (that I have seen, so far) on the weird phenomenon of the completely hopeless reponse of the left to the removal of a fascist tyrant from power, and keep it on my blog for posterity:
How are antiwar liberals hoping to reach Americans if they can't sympathize with such a simple human sentiment as exhilaration over dethroning and possibly killing a dictator/torturer? How emotionally plastinated and downright cockamamie do these people have to be? They're the new Nancy Reagan: telling people to "say no" without giving any indication of ever having been high.
And I may just print it out and frame it too. I mean, Holy Donut-Rolling Jebus on a Motorcycle, what is it with these people? Saddam wasn't even a Communist! His Baathist Party was some sort of freakazoid offshoot of Nazism with Arab flavoring. He has more palaces than baby Doc! Gold fricking toilet seats! While Iraqi children, as we were famously reminded about every thirty seconds not too long ago, were Starving Because of the Sanctions. But now that the old torturer is out of power and his statues are being toppled and the formerly oppressed Iraqis are dancing and kissing Marines, the peacenuggets are crying in their herbal tea. You'd almost think--
Nah. Even the peacenuggets couldn't be that bad.
Posted by Andrea Harris at April 10, 2003 03:08 AMWasn't Saddam a Stalinist, though?
I have realized (I'm probably not the first) that if you go enough to the left and right, you end up at the same place- hell.
Posted by: Inscrutable American at April 10, 2003 at 03:42 AMWrong Communist. Stalin is the Commie everyone loves to hate. "Sure, we're Marxists, but it's Castro and Ché and Lenin we admire -- Stalin was a criminal!" Oh, and Trotsky. They all love to admire Trotsky. But heck, Saddam picked the guy who managed to kill the most people -- I wonder why?
Posted by: Andrea Harris at April 10, 2003 at 03:46 AMA good many "liberals" are actually worshippers of power. Of course, they think of it as power with which to do good things, but the central element of their desires is the power itself. So they get pouty when reality demonstrates that concentrations of power attract the worst men in the world, as they invariably seem to do. Friedrich Hayek was booed by "liberals" and socialists all around the world when he pointed this out, along with the reasons for it, in his book The Road To Serfdom.
Apropos of which, we're at a critical moment in history here in America, too. We have a good man in a position with almost unlimited power. The better he behaves, the more likely it is that people will forget the terrible excesses of previous years, and will therefore relax to that huge concentration of power in Washington -- a bad spinoff from a very good thing.
I hope Dubya has some ideas for returning the federal government to its Constitutional bounds, or at least for nudging it back toward them.
Posted by: Francis W. Porretto at April 10, 2003 at 07:07 AMOh, Francis. Francis Francis Francis. Constitutionalism hasn't even been a consideration in the US since FDR, except if you're accused of a crime. I exaggerate, but not by much.
Now since I happen to like constitutional protections for the accused, it's time to restore them to the rest of us.
Posted by: Dave at April 10, 2003 at 10:25 AMI was perusing the Democratic Underground forums yesterday (the Morlocks, as I like to call them) and I was somewhat surprised at the extent of the nuttery present there. It is certainly not 100% of everyone there who's out of their mind but I'd estimate easily maybe 50-75%. In a thread about the liberation of a children's prison in Iraq (designed to lock up those who did not join Saddam's yugen, errr, Cubs) they were outright skeptical and wanted to wait and see what the real truth was. Several people believed that it was nothing more than an orphanage or perhaps a "juvenile hall" for rebellious or criminal teens. And that was hardly the worst of the delusion.
Lol, Morlocks, now that works! I have to say I agree about the Colby quote. It is staggering that machinations the left is going through to remain "right-on".
Posted by: Andrew Ian Castel-Dodge at April 10, 2003 at 02:16 PMOne of the nice things about calling them 'Morlocks' is that one of their leaders is already a 'Morford'.
Posted by: Dr. Weevil at April 10, 2003 at 03:15 PMAs usual, Colby Cosh is too cute by half. Of course Nancy Reagan had every right to tell Americans just to say "no" to drugs. Go read some of the literature about the effects drugs had on some of her children and step children.
You don't have to muzzle up to a quaalude pill in order to realize that not being able to control the desire for quaaludes ruins your life, now do you?
So, as usual, Colby is bashing his target rightfully but bashing with a broken stick none the less.
Him I could understand. Afterall he's a journalist and a Canadian. It makes no sense to expect otherwise. But you, my dear ... we have much greater expectations of you.
Posted by: Paul A'Barge at April 10, 2003 at 03:37 PMLesson one, Paul: don't lecture me, or talk down to me, and we'll get along fine.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at April 10, 2003 at 05:33 PM